Verdi’s Aidawas written fairly late in his life; he was never to write another that matched its popularity. I have a friend who regards it with a certain bemusement as a canonical example of elephantine opera, and this is true to some extent (though, in fairness, the production I watched this week had only elephant tusks, rather than real, whole elephants). It has an exotic setting, in the court of the Pharaoh in ancient Egypt, and is plump with pomp and circumstance. But it gives its singers some very beautiful material, and it has a fine, tragic finale.
The story is basically that of a love triangle between Radames, the commander of the Egyptian army, Aida, a servant in the Pharaoh’s household who also happens to be an Ethiopian princess, and Amneris, the Pharaoh’s daughter. Both Aida and Amneris love Radames, but Radames loves only Aida.
In the first act Radames sings a celebrated aria, Celeste Aida (Heavenly Aida), in which he expresses his love for her. It has one of those gorgeous melodies which, once heard, will be with you for the rest of the day. It is the aria I think of first when I think of this opera. Here is Luciano Pavarotti, senza subtitles:
By Act III Radames has led the Egyptian forces to battle against an invading Ethopian army intent on rescuing Aida, and returned triumphant. Aida sings a beautiful aria of lament: O patria mia, mai più ti rivedrò! (O my country, never more will I see you!) Here is Leontyne Price, con subtitles:
As I said above, the finale of Aida is a show-stopper. Radames falls from grace when his love for Aida is revealed, and he is condemend to death for treason. The Egyptians bury him alive inside a great stone tomb, and as he despairs over his loss of Aida he is surprised to find her in the tomb with him — she had snuck in when she learned of the punishment decreed for him. The opera comes to a close with an amazing trio: Radames and Aida inside the tomb, embracing and declaring their love, and Amneris on the outside, lamenting Radames’ death. Dramatically I find it extremely effective. Much of the music of this scene reprises material heard earlier, so structurally it works well too. Here are Placido Domingo, Aprile Millo, and Dolora Zajick from a 1989 production at the Met:
“I was searching for a small island of sound, for a ‘place’ inside me, where… a dialogue with God might occur. To find this place was a vital task for me.”
This was how Arvo Pärt described the musical exploration which led him to his distinctive compositional method, which he calls tinntinnabulation — the music of bells. This very enjoyable collection of essays in the Cambridge Companion series examines his music from a variety of perspectives. The contributors, though almost all academics, write in a manner that is intelligible and interesting to non-specialist readers, albeit with occasional overlardings of academic jargon. Still, it is a splendid book for Pärt enthusiasts.
Arvo Pärt grew up in Estonia, on the periphery of the Soviet musical establishment, and initially he wrote serial compositions after the approved academic manner. But, as he later reflected, he began to chafe against the expressive limitations of serial music: “If the human has conflict in his soul and with everything, then this system of twelve-tone music is exactly good for this,” he said, but his heart had grown tired of conflict. In 1972, at the age of 37, he converted to Orthodoxy, and, through a sustained study of medieval and renaissance masters, was gradually led to a drastic simplification of means, to a music founded on the simplest harmonic unit:
“Holy men have left behind all their wealth and are heading for the desert. Similarly, the composer wishes to leave behind the entire modern arsenal and save himself through naked monophony carrying only that which is crucial — the triad.”
(To get a feel for his early style, here is a section from Collage über B-A-C-H, from 1964. This starts off sounding more or less like Bach, but not for long.)
(By way of contrast, here is his earliest tinntinnabuli composition, Für Alina, from 1976. This is very simple music, but the effect is enchanting.)
Though he abandoned serialism, it is interesting that he has retained in his later music an interest in structure and the permutation methods that one generally associates with serialists — but which, perhaps more relevantly, one can also find in the masters of medieval and renaissance polyphony. In one essay, Thomas Robinson comments that in Pärt’s music “fascinating structures lie hidden and ingenious processes are at work”. There are several analyses in this volume describing the rigorous structure undergirding particular compositions; one doesn’t hear it, exactly, but for me simply knowing it is there adds to the interest of the music.
(Here is a concert performance of Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror), for violin and piano, from 1978, played by Anne Akiko Meyers. This piece has a great deal of symmetry built into it. Unlucky moviegoers might remember it from the opening scene of Gus van Sant’s Gerry.)
A complaint about the book is that the idea of tinntinnabulation, the structural principle at the heart of Pärt’s music, is not very clearly explained. Some years ago I read Paul Hillier’s excellent study of Pärt, and from what I recall tinntinnabuli music is based on the interplay of (in its simplest form) two voices: one called the M voice (or ‘main’ voice) and the other the T voice (or ‘tinntinnabuli’ voice). The main voice always, or almost always, moves stepwise, and the T voice accompanies it at specified intervals, often oscillating back and forth between a position beneath the M voice and a position above it. Something like that, anyway. There is a brief discussion of these matters in the present volume, but for me the main points were not made sufficiently clearly.
(Here is one of my favourite Pärt pieces: De Profundis, for mixed choir, from 1980.)
Naturally, in a collection of this sort some of the essays are better than others. The editor, Andrew Shenton, contributed a piece called “Pärt in his own words” which is a wonderful introduction to the composer and his own understanding of his music. It helps that Pärt is such a fascinating and attractive character. The other essay that most appealed to me was called “Radiating from silence: the works of Arvo Pärt seen through a musician’s eyes”, by Andreas Peer Kahler. Without any academic pretensions, Kahler gives a brief but very insightful account of the challenges of this music and the experience of playing or singing it. He observes that the music’s apparent simplicity is deceptive, not least because the lack of virtuosity requires the musician to fall back on clear articulation, strict control, and careful balance, a combination that exposes the weaknesses of many musicians in a most unusual way. The essay I liked the least (there has to be one) was on the topic of “Arvo Pärt and spirituality”; in it, the author tries to assimilate Pärt to a pluralistic, non-committal kind of spirituality. But Pärt himself has said, “If anybody wishes to know my ‘philosophy’, then they can read any of the Church Fathers”; he is very far from being a religious syncretist.
All told, however, this is an instructive and at times fascinating book.
**
Let’s hear a little more music! Lest one get the impression that his music is entirely slow and meditative, listen to his (Russian) setting of the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Our Lady: Bogoróditse Djévo, from 1990. This is an amateur choir and the recording is not top shelf, but the singing is excellent:
Perhaps my favourite of Pärt’s compositions is his massive Kanon Pokajanen, for choir, from 1997. It is a beautiful and imposing setting of the Orthodox Canon of Repentance, and it ends with this tender prayer (text and translation):
Further to my recent notes on Scottish faerie, here is a wonderful song from Scotland about a man who escapes the enchantment of the Queen of the Fairies. I had never heard the song, nor the story, until recently, but apparently it has a long history.
This version of the song is sung by Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer, and is included on their recent record Child Ballads, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
In the minds of many opera lovers, Peter Grimes is held to be Benjamin Britten’s greatest opera. It follows, if the point be granted, that it is among the greatest English-language operas in the whole repertoire (of which there are precious few), and one of the finest of twentieth-century operas. I myself do not grant the original premise — in my mind, it is Billy Budd that takes the palm — but I do agree that Peter Grimes is a work of rare power and depth, with a swirling stew of dramatic themes and a characterful and muscular score.
The story is based on a poem by George Crabbe, but the characterization and dramatic thrust were considerably altered in the course of translation to the operatic stage. Grimes is a fisherman plying his trade, with the help of a young assistant, off the coast of Aldeburgh. Several of Grimes’ assistants have perished on the job in recent years, and he lives under a cloud of suspicion in the small community. In Crabbe’s original version of the story, Grimes is guilty of killing the boys, but Britten’s version is more ambiguous: Grimes is clearly unstable, and sometimes cruel, but his assistants seem to have died in — to use a phrase that appears numerous times in the libretto — “accidental circumstances”. Grimes is nonetheless an outcast, with only one person in the town, Ellen Orford, reaching out to him in friendship. The opera therefore gives Britten an opportunity to explore many themes: social stigma, madness, poverty, justice, friendship, and so on.
Let’s begin at the beginning: the opening scene is one of the most memorable in the work. We join a courtroom inquiry into the death of Grimes’ apprentice, and Grimes himself is just taking the stand. His testimony given and other evidence presented, the boy’s death is ruled accidental, but the townspeople are unconvinced. As the courtroom empties, only Ellen stays behind with Peter, and together they sing what is sometimes called (and what I believe Britten himself called) “the love duet”, though it is an odd love duet indeed. Here is the full scene (about 9 minutes), and embedded below is the “love duet” portion. I like the way it is almost entirely a capella. Note also that Peter and Ellen begin singing in different keys, but gradually converge not only to a common key, but actually to singing together. Pay special attention to the leaping interval (a ninth) when they sing together, “Your voice, out of the pain, is like a hand that I can feel.”; this interval recurs throughout the work at key moments.
For the remaining “great moments” I’ll skip to the final act. Grimes’ latest apprentice, a boy named John, has slipped from atop a wet cliff and fallen to his death, and Ellen, upon finding his sweater washed up on shore, sings a heart-breaking, and very beautiful, song which begins: “Embroidery in childhood was a luxury”. This is certainly among the loveliest moments in the opera; it is sung here by Patricia Racette.
Meanwhile, Grimes has been declining by degrees. A mob of townsfolk, upon learning of the boy’s death, are searching for him, intending harm. For a few minutes he holds the stage to deliver a “mad scene”. Mad scenes have an illustrious history in opera, though they are usually vehicles of dazzling virtuosity for sopranos. Not here: Grimes is breaking down, and the music goes with him. Again, this is largely unaccompanied singing, which has an eerie quality in an opera house.
There exists video of this part being sung by Peter Pears, for whom Britten wrote the role, and so I feel a sort of obligation to link to it: done! Personally I prefer the singing of the great Jon Vickers in this role:
Ellen and an old sailor named Balstrode discover Peter. Ellen attempts to draw him in, but Balstrode instructs him to sail his boat out to sea and sink it. Much had been made of this scene, both musically (for it is the one time in the opera when dialogue is spoken rather than sung, as though to illustrate the low estate to which matters have come) and dramatically (for, if Peter is innocent of harming the boys, why should he accept an unjust death?). It is certainly chillingly effective. Here is Jon Vickers again, in a performance led by Sir Colin Davis; no video per se, but someone has taken the trouble to splice in the sections of the libretto that correspond to the music as it plays:
The clip above will actually carry us through right to the end of the opera. On the morning after Peter sails someone remarks that the coast guard reports a boat sinking off-shore, but too far out for a rescue effort, news which another character dismisses as “one of those rumours”. It brings to an end an immensely sad but humane and thought-provoking masterpiece.
My indispensable old copy of Kobbe’s Complete Opera Book has this to say of Il Trovatore:
The libretto of Il Trovatore is considered the acme of absurdity…
which doesn’t seem a good beginning, but then there is this:
…the popularity of the opera is believed to be entirely due to the almost unbroken melodiousness of Verdi’s score.
And it’s true: the music is glorious, and Il Trovatore (which, incidentally, means “The Troubadour”) is among the most frequently staged operas in the world (ranked, most recently, #21). My initial short list for “great moments” had fifteen items on it, which (you will be happy to know) I have whittled down to just four (or five).
I am not going to try to explain the story. Key events have already taken place when the curtain rises, and, though we do learn about them in a monologue, the opera never really recovers from this misbegotten start. Here is a synopsis; I’ve read it a few times, but it makes little sense to me. In the clips below, therefore, we shall focus on the music rather than the dramatic situations.
The music of the Act II aria Stride la vampa (Upward the flames) is among the most memorable and important in the opera. The principal theme recurs frequently in the score in a variety of guises, and I think of it as something like the “Trovatore theme”. It is sung by Acuzena, an old gypsy woman, and the Aria Database provides this helpful summary: “Azucena describes her mother’s death to Manrico and the crowd of gypsies. Her mother was burned at the stake for being a witch while the ones who falsely convicted her laughed and enjoyed themselves.” I’ll take their word for it:
Act III brings us Di quella pira (Of that pyre), one of the showstopping-est of all tenor arias, the forbidding reputation of which rests principally on the high C which our hero, Manrico, is called upon to deliver. It is interesting to note that the high C was not actually written by Verdi, but was inserted by a young turk in the early days, and now every tenor worth his salt has to add it too. The Kobbe book again: “The tenor who sings the high C in ‘Di quella pira’ without getting red in the face will hardly be credited with having sung it at all.” Here is Pavarotti:
In the fourth and final act we have a famous sequence which consists of a few arias, but which is sometimes grouped together as “Leonora’s scene”. It begins with D’amor sull’ali rosee (On rosy wings of love), a meltingly beautiful aria in which Leonora expresses her love for Manrico. It is followed by a choral chanting of the Miserere, of which my Kobbe Opera Book remarks that it “was for many years … the most popular of all melodies from opera”. It launches Leonora into Tu vedrai (You will see), in which she sings of her determination to remain with Manrico to the end. I gather that Manrico must be in some kind of trouble.
Here is the whole scene, in a concert performance by Anna Netrebko. D’amor sull’ali rosee begins at 3:00 in this clip, but it would be a pity to miss the preceding recitative; the Miserere begins at about 8:00 and Tu vedrai follows hard upon.
In closing, I cannot help linking to a performance of Ai nostri monti (Back to our mountains), a gorgeous duet sung by Manrico and Azucena that seems to indicate that the opera has a happy ending. Here are Placido Domingo and Fiorenza Cossotto:
I have mentioned before that in February I will be seeing the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. It is one of those operas that has been on my short-list for quite a few years, and I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to see it.
It opened this week, and I am pleased to see that the production is being praised in lavish terms (also here). Hurrah! I think this is going to be great.
Here is a promotional video for the COC’s production:
Here’s an interesting fragment of cultural history: Gramophone magazine has dug up a “symposium” which they originally published in 1926 wherein they polled leading figures in British society about their favourite songs, singers, composers, and so forth. Among the respondents are Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, D.H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, Noël Coward, Walter de la Mare, W. Somerset Maughan, G.B. Shaw (sort of), and Max Beerbohm — those are just the names I recognize.
The responses are what they are, but I cannot help wondering what sort of responses would be given to a parallel poll today. Even taking into consideration that it is Gramophone magazine asking the questions, I expect that we would see a much greater emphasis on popular music and much less familiarity with anything written more than fifty years ago.
Actually, we don’t have to speculate. Casting about a bit I discover that a number of politicians have announced their favourite songs: Barack Obama and John McCain, for instance, or here is a long list including Bill Clinton, Bill O’Reilly, Mitt Romney, John Kerry, and so forth. It is pop music across the board. These folks are all American; maybe things would be different elsewhere, and maybe we shouldn’t expect much from politicians. Here is a list of movie stars, singers, and politicians naming their favourite songs; aside from a few jazz standards and one classical piece (Tony Blair likes “Ave Maria”, although we are not told which setting), they are all pop songs. If we ask specifically about favourite composers, not much comes up; Quentin Tarantino likes Ennio Morricone, so that’s something.
Fidelio was Beethoven’s only opera, which was understandable given the trouble he took over it. He laboured, off and on, for over a decade, and in the end three different versions were published. Today it is usually the last of these that is performed.
In an art form in which love affairs are so often paired with jealousy, lust, murder, and all the other outsized elements of grand opera, Fidelio is a notable exception for being a drama in praise of faithful married love. Beethoven, for all his musical innovations and his emblematic role as Enlightenment hero, was no moral revolutionary. Florestan languishes in prison for exposing the corruption of a local authority, and his wife Leonora, disguised as a man and answering to the name “Fidelio”, is trying to gain access to the prison to comfort him. Strange to say, not much happens in the opera’s two-hour span: Leonora eventually does get into the prison just as a threat against Florestan’s life is coming to a head; the one prevents the other, and the couple are reunited and live happily ever after.
Let’s listen first to the Act I quartet Mir ist so wunderbar (How wondrous the feeling). The characters here are Leonora (that is, “Fidelio”), Marcellina (daughter of Florestan’s jailor, and the woman whom “Fidelio” has been courting in order to get close to her husband), Rocco (the jailor), and, toward the end, Jacquino (a third wheel who is genuinely in love with Marcellina). This quartet is written in a canon, so, at least initially, each character has the same melodic line, and they must differentiate their various thoughts and feelings through emphasis and tone. It’s an awfully pretty piece of music. Here it is, with English subtitles, assuming that I can get this video to start and stop where I want:
(Apparently I cannot get it to stop where I want. I want to stop at 23:15.)
Act II opens with what is probably the most famous aria in the opera. For the first time — already half-way through the opera — we see and hear Florestan, confined in his prison cell. He sings a long lament, Gott! Welch Dunkel hier! (God! What darkness here!) It’s a moving few minutes. Here is Ben Heppner; again, I am unable to stop this video at the end of the aria, but it comes to an end somewhere around 1:24:30.
Finally, near the end of the opera there is another lovely quartet in which the various principals reflect on what has happened: Florestan freed, reunited with Leonora, and justice done. It is a pool of quietness before the rousing closing number. It ends at about 1:56:30.
*
The most popular music in the opera is probably the overture. Personally I don’t care much for it, but I am in a minority. Here it is, Leonard Bernstein conducting:
Finally, a curiosity: here is Walter Berry, a famous mid-century bass-baritone, singing Pizzaro’s aria Ha! welch ein Augenblick (Ha! What a moment). Pizzaro is the evil genius in the opera, the powerful man at the top on whose orders Florestan has been unjustly imprisoned, and in this aria he expresses his determination to have Florestan killed. I post this clip not because it is well sung (though it is) but because I cannot believe how much Berry resembles George Clooney! See if you don’t agree:
Today some fascinating music from a relatively little-known source: Clement Janequin probably wrote this chanson to celebrate the victory of the French over the Swiss at the Battle of Marignan in 1515 — not that any of us know or much care about that battle. The reason to hear it is not the battle, but the music! If you think all Renaissance music is solemn and stately in the Palestrina manner, you’re in for a surprise. La guerre is here given a spectacular live performance by The King’s Singers. It takes about two minutes to really warm up, so if you do decide to listen don’t abandon it too soon.
I would like to link to an English translation, but I cannot find one — not that one could follow it anyway. The first few minutes set up the battle, the middle section portrays the battle itself (and this is where the real fireworks happen), and the final section celebrates the French victory. Here we go:
Here is a list of the major music-related birthdays and memorials that I — and, surely, you — will be marking, to one degree or another, this year.
Birthdays
1000 years
Hermannus Contractus (1013-1054) [July 18]
450 years
John Dowland (1563-1626) [date?]
200 years
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) [May 22]
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) [October 10]
Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) [November 30]
150 years
Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) [December 7]
100 years
Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) [January 25]
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) [November 22]
Memorials
400 years
Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) [September 8]
300 years
Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713) [8 January]
50 years
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) [January 30]
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) [December 28]
***
The birthdays of Wagner and Verdi loom largest; I hadn’t realized before that they were born in the same year. Neither is in my short list of favourite composers, but an anniversary year is a good opportunity to re-appraise. I would like to say that I’ll listen again this year to The Ring Cycle, and I might, but it is more likely that my Wagner-birthday observance will pivot around Tristan und Isolde, which I will be seeing live next month. As for Verdi, the public library is my friend: I am going to make an effort to see at least a few of his operas on DVD.
The same is true of Benjamin Britten’s operas: there are several that I have not heard, and more that I have not seen performed; I hope to fill those gaps this year.
My sentimental favourite is the 1000th birthday of Hermannus Contractus, who is credited with the authorship of the great Marian hymns “Salve Regina” and “Alma Redemptoris Mater” (which I am still trying to learn).
A more comprehensive list of music-related births and deaths to be marked in 2013 can be found here. (Thanks, Osbert.)
The contents of this web log will normally include ruminations on books and music, the occasional essay, ill-informed pronouncements on current events, inarticulate private disclosures, impromptu sermons, failed recipes, and fashion advice (most especially on the merits of donning the glad rags of popery). Welcome, fair reader, with all my heart!
